A large fire at the historic Camden Lock was widely reported in the media. The fire brigade were called at 19:10h and around 100 firefighters fought the blaze which was brought under control after 1am, having severely damaged a range of market storage areas, shops, dwellings and two pubs.

A BBC news report of the fire can be found at:
BBC website

Previous large fires have been linked to short-term elevations in PM10 concentrations both locally and many kilometres away, the 2007 warehouse fire on the Olympics construction site being a prime example.

Warehouse Fire in East London - 12th Nov 2007

Our operations staff examined PM10 measurements from across London on Saturday evening, during the first 2 hours of the fire, and more detailed analysis took place on Sunday and Monday. Several monitoring sites measured ‘moderate’ PM10 particulate on Saturday 9th February but these were due to poor dispersion of traffic pollutants rather than the effects of the fire.

Short term elevated concentrations of PM10 were measured at several sites on Saturday evening and Sunday morning but these could not be positively linked to the Camden Lock fire. The most notable peak was 570 ug m-3 TEOM*1.3 at Croydon 4 however the location of the monitoring site with respect to the fire and prevalent south easterly - easterly wind direction ruled out any linkage.

Item date 11/02/2008